Feeling left out of the insane over-reactions by comic and Disney fans yesterday, anime fans got their chance today with the legalese-filled press release ADV Films put out.
I’m slightly bewildered by the distress some people seem to have over this state of affairs, presumably the same people who shout SUPPORT THE INDUSTRY as if video distribution company was football team. It’s not like an anime production company has closed it’s doors, or a talented animator can’t find work. It was a company that localised foreign cartoons, and distributed them according to an outdated business model for the western DVD market as a whole.
During the VHS era, it was an important player, but like Geneon, it didn’t move fast enough to meet the demands of the DVD market as a whole. Admittedly the US market was slow in general on this, and other, bigger distributors like Paramount were also slow in realising what the market found acceptable. And the Japanese side of things still hasn’t realised what is acceptable, though this wasn’t helped by folks like ADV going licensing crazy for a while there.
So now we appear to have Section 23 Films (aka the appalling named SXION 23), as the replacement to ADV Films, and what appears a smooth handover. So the past few hours of hysteria and corpse kicking seem a little silly. This one is great in its succinct, insane, conspiracy theorising.
Also: Clannad fans are fucking insane. Yes Clannad fans, I am judging you all on Mario1234567.